Game development is worthless? WTF? (Was: Why Ruby?)

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Daniel Gibson" <metalcaedes at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.37.1292790264.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 5:41 PM, Caligo <iteronvexor at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You are absolutely right; life sucks for many people, and that's why some 
>> of
>> them choose to play video games. It gives them a chance to escape 
>> reality,
>> and game companies exploit this to make money. Game companies use all 
>> kinds
>> of psychology in their games to keep you playing as long as possible. 
>> That
>> is why to me there is no honor in game development.
>
>This is bullshit.
>Of course there are games with that goal (WoW, ...), but this doesn't make 
>game
>development in general "unhonorable". There are many games that are
>not like this,
>for example most single player only games.. you play them until the end or 
>until
>you can't get any further and that's it.. maybe you play them again in
>the future, but
>it's not like a constant addiction. (I'm not saying that multi player
>games are generally
>more "dangerous" or anything, single player games are just an example 
>everybody
>should be able to comprehend)
>There are also game developers who openly label games like WoW "unethical",
>e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow
>

Interesting. I don't think I would go so far as to claim that WoW was 
unethical...just "uninteresting" ;) But that's just me. This is at least one 
thing the videogame world does that I do consider unethical: 
Proprietary/Closed platforms. But that's not just a videogame thing, of 
course. I consider proprietary/closed platforms in general to be unethical. 
(Oh crap, I think I can feel myself turning into Stallman!)